Or if circles aren’t for you, or you can’t cross the distance to join one, just stay where you are. There’s no distance love cannot cross. Just tie a red thread around your wrist. And go inward.
I’ll leave you with this.
My ladylove, Kate (or the Good Witch, as Shai has called her since he was two), spent a weekend with me recently at a place called Omega. It was a sort of mom’s soul camp slumber party. We came to see one of our favorite writers and her wife for a conference about living our truest lives. I was expecting to cry a lot because Kate and I always do. Our proximity to each other seems to amplify all of our emotions. And this, of course, makes our laughing harder too.
What I wasn’t expecting were the jolts of sheer electricity that shot through me every time I saw the two presenters look at each other. Their love was visible. Palpable. My soul swooned. Each time I saw that light in their eyes zip like a tiny flash of lightning between them, my body seemed to erupt into an exuberant gospel choir, singing, “EVERYTHING’S STILL POSSIBLE.”
We discussed the importance of women coming together, of letting our love for each other shift the current climate of divisiveness. That we can answer this time of alternate facts that incite violence with more unity, with an even louder, more radical love, and we can practice love more faithfully, as Dr. Cornel West describes, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
There was a lot of dancing, which to me has always felt like the way women pray when no else is watching. At one point, Pink’s “I Am Here” came over the speakers and we all shot up like choreographed dancers into the aisles and between the chairs.
I thought as I danced of the picture my mom had taken of me and Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement, earlier that week. It was taken right after I sobbed my thank-you to her brilliant, knowing eyes. I said to her, “I’m a survivor. I’ve never felt less alone. We’re together now.” And I thought of all the marches I had joined recently, my one small raspy voice, among a sea of other voices, unified as if one mouth. I knew I was making my mother and great-grandmother proud, and also all the generations who had stood up through the centuries to love the other as themselves.
My eyes are so puffy and red in that picture. And the smile that’s on my face, I’ve never looked more real. There’s elation in it. There’s this resilience. This victory. This tiny personal triumph.
This is what I felt as I danced with the Good Witch and about 300 other women, tears streaming down my face, ecstatic, screaming off-key but with the force of a declaration, “I Am Here.” Here in a body with a sign above the door in my heart that reads, “Here anyone can live free.”
We’ve seen the world that the ego creates in its insatiable quest to acquire material worth, power over others, and supremacy. What we have the possibility of cultivating is the world the soul creates. The world Christ and Mary and a radical band of believers in the 1st century wanted to realize. The ones who knew that the inner transformation creates the outer transformation. That the love that’s hidden within each of us is the only power that can save all of us.
I thought of Penny, and the prayer of the heart she had taught me on that Buddhist retreat so long ago. How small and magnificent she was. And I realized that this is what her presence had said to me too, that everything was still possible. Or as the Nobel Peace Prize–nominated author and monk Thich Nhat Hanh relates, “Because you are alive, everything is possible.”
I think my elation came from this: There was no part of me that was “existing elsewhere.” I was here with a radical band of believers. We’re all still here. The names and the dates change. But the love never ends.
On the last night of the retreat, Kate and I (in matching jammies) rolled up the imaginary window between our beds (so we’d stop talking) and said our good-nights early to get some sleep.
I pulled up the covers and proceeded to have the least restful night of my life. Here I was at a place called Omega, which is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, or the end, and here’s what it felt like: I closed my eyes and I walked, wide-awake, into a pitch-dark classroom. It felt like I was entering kindergarten, no, preschool. I was starting all over. I was at the beginning again.
My heart started to swell with this ineffable light. No, it’s not a light, it’s a warmth. No, it’s more than the feeling of warmth, it’s the absence of emptiness. It’s a sensation of finally reaching a place you realize in a very real way you have never left. You just know now, you’re here. This is where you are in reality. Right here, in the dark, in the presence of the light that has never left you. And as you let your heart swell, all you can see is a hand reaching out toward you. You don’t need to know what’s next, when what’s next comes from within. You just remain. You just reach out to take this hand that is always extending out toward you and you start again.
You hear Joan of Arc say, “I am not afraid; I was born to do this.” You hear Marguerite Porete say, “Love has no beginning, no end, and no limit, and I am nothing except love.” You hear Perpetua say, “Love one another.” You hear Thecla say, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize myself.” And, you hear Mary Magdalene say, “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.”
And this is how you rise; further up is farther in. And the darkness is where the light has always been. Here in the heart is the treasure. And you remember again and again, I am here.
APPENDIX 1
The Soul-Voice Meditation
The soul-voice meditation is a practice I created from my exposure to the history of Christian contemplative prayer while in seminary, specifically in the form of the Byzantine mystics known as Hesychasts. Hesychastic practice originates in the Eastern Orthodox Church and dates back to at least as early as the 4th century. It was an exclusively eremitic tradition that involved the metaphysical and physio-spiritual process of turning inward and focusing only on the heart in order to experience the divine directly. This spiritual process is recounted in detail by Evagrius Pontikos in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers in the 4th century and then again two centuries later in Saint John of Sinai’s The Ladder of Divine Ascent.
Hesychia is Greek for stillness, rest, and silence. Hesychasm was a contemplative practice for hermits and male monastics to go within and meet with that voice that doesn’t need words. The voice beneath the voice of the ego. The soul-voice. I am quite clearly the antithesis to a 4th-century male monastic. I was, however, somewhat of an urban nun after three years of seminary. And the ancient Hesychast and I had one pivotal commonality, a red thread that bound us: the desire to always be aware of the divine.
So I took the spiritual tool the Heschasts provided of turning inward and of focusing all of my attention into a space called “heart,” a space of limitless truth inside me. And I began a daily meditation practice of going inward, to open to that stillness in the heart, and to the presence of my soul that would never fail to meet me there.
It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing or who I happen to be with at the time. Like Kegels, no one has to know I’m even doing it for it to be effective. It can be very cloak-and-dagger, meditating. No incense needed, no closed eyes even. I mean, I prefer it, but I’ve had powerful SVMs on the elliptical machine at the gym, or while driving. Going inward is all about the intention that’s set, not about the setting that’s surrounding me.
What I found from my own practice over the past decade is that it allows me to know one invaluable thing: my own truth. It lets me hear my own voice, even amid the pressures of external expectations, or especially, internalized ones.
The quote that received the most attention from my first book, REVEAL, came from the Soul-Voice chapter and reads: “There will never be a voice outside of you that is wiser than your soul-voice or holds more authority over what is best for you. You need guidance and support not to follow someone else’s truth but to remain loyal to your own. The voice that will guide you to your highest potential is within you.”51
The soul-voice meditation is a
spiritual tool for seekers of all religious traditions to be able to go within no matter where they are and connect to the voice of truth inside them. It’s a tool that helps them discern between the voice of fear and the voice of love. That sounds wildly simplistic. But I’ve found that it really is simple. I’ve found that we tend to already know the answers to the questions we’re seeking. Fear creates this static or white noise and this jittery, frenetic energy that makes us think we can (a) find the answer outside of us, and (b) find the answer with the mind. The answer, however, in my experience, doesn’t come from a thought, it comes from a feeling. And we have access to those feelings in the heart. Heart, as in, again, that limitless (and somewhat) fathomless space within us where we can meet with what is far more than our own ego’s life-span.
Start by taking a deep breath, and with this breath set the intention to go into your heart. Imagine this space called heart however you want to—a cathedral with light-drenched stained-glass windows, a disco ball hanging above a dance floor casting light diamonds everywhere as it spins, a little red raft on a warm, calm ocean that just floats and sustains you and feels like the most dependable thing that has ever existed.
Then, when you’re there (and by there I mean when you feel as though you’ve settled yourself enough to go inward, when you feel that state of heart that only comes from dislodging the mind, or that feeling that comes when you cut yourself off from thoughts of the past and concerns of the future, and you’re just sort of hanging out, right here), take a second breath. And with this second breath set the intention of meeting with your soul, and if soul scares you, set the intention of meeting with your truth, and if the word truth sounds unapproachable, just intend to meet with love. And if you’re afraid to meet with love (who isn’t), then just intend to meet with your voice. That one you had at some point in your life, like when you wore a cape at age seven, or when you stood up to that bully on the playground in middle school, or when you told that first crush how you actually felt, or when you said that first no to someone you wanted to impress but had to get real instead, or when you said that first yes even though you knew it meant that others would judge you and not understand. That voice. Take your second intentional breath and with it run to that voice like it’s your long-lost beloved. Because it is.
Now, together, when you and this soul-voice have linked pinkies again, or are walking arm in arm in your imagination, or heart-cathedral, or floating together on a little red raft on the calmest seas that have never existed, then ask. Ask anything and everything. And here’s the most important thing ever, believe it. Believe this voice you hear inside you so much that you actually act on it. Believe in this voice. Believe in you.
Before taking the third breath, start to give gratitude. Say thank-yous like throwing confetti at a wedding. Thank everything and anything that might have come to you. Because what we ask inwardly, we find.
Let me break down briefly what it means to speak the language of the angels, like Mary Magdalene, or Theresa of Avila, or Joan of Arc. We don’t have to be legends or religion-starting figures in history to hear them. “Angels,” to me, are those moments when I can hear something new, when I can see a circumstance or person differently. When I can take off the lens of how I was seeing myself and see through that illusion to the reality. And this new vision then frees me.
So, “seeing” comes in many forms. And the way it will come to you is the way most often that will freak you out the least. So, for example, in REDLADIES, some ladies hear their soul-voice in an actual “voice.” In that internal voice only we can hear within us. Others “hear” their soul-voice through these images that appear in the wake of whatever question they have asked, and this image tells them a story, which contains the answers. And some feel the response. Some just ask and know because of a flood of emotion that just communicates what words and images cannot. That bone knowing, that unspoken truth that just flashes us a peek at the universe and then hides itself again in the mystery.
With this third breath, intend to surface from behind your eyes, seeing out now with the eyes of love. There’s nothing more radical or revolutionary than doing this every day.
APPENDIX 2
Mary Magdalene’s Red Thread Reading List
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels (New York: Vintage Books, May 2004).
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, by Jean-Yves Leloup (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2002).
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, by Karen L. King (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003).
The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union, by Jean-Yves Leloup (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003).
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (New York: Random House, 1982).
The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, by Cynthia Bourgeault (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2010).
A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, edited by Hal Taussig (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
The Pistis Sophia, edited and translated by G. R. S. Mead (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
The Red Book, by C. G. Jung, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani (New York: Philemon Foundation and W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).
The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament, by Jane Schaberg (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002).
The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mystery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition, by Jean-Yves Leloup (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005).
The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, by Jeffrey Kripal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message, by Cynthia Bourgeault (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2008).
Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, translated by Kadloubovsky and Palmer (New York: Faber & Faber, Inc., 1979).
APPENDIX 3
Resources for Giving and Receiving Support
Me Too Movement
www.metoomvmt.org
VDAY
www.vday.org
Love146
www.love146.org
Together Rising
www.togetherrising.org
ENDNOTES
Why I Could Kiss a Copt
1. Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2008), 16.
2. Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003), 11.
3. Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2010), 44.
4. Hal Taussig, ed., A New, New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company, 2013), 100.
How a Feminist Sees an Angel
5. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, 152.
Grandma Betty’s Lightbulb Eyes
6. Ibid., 160.
7. Ibid.
8. Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2002), xi.
9. Ibid., 20.
The Buddha Tara’s Badass Vow
10. Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003).
11. Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, 115.
12. Pistis Sophia II, 72, quoted in Schaberg, The Resurrection, 162, and Kripal’s The Serpent’s Gift, 56.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
13. Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, 72.
What It Means to Be Saved
14. Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, 17.
15. Ibid., 19.
16. Ibid., 21.
What It Means to Be Human
17. Leloup, The Gospel of Philip, 27.
18. Jean-Yves Leloup, The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mystery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005), 37.
19. Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, 107.
20. Leloup, The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary, 8.
What I Learned as the Burning Bush
21. Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, trans. Kadloubovsky and Palmer (New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1979), 28.
22. Ibid., 30.
23. Ibid., 38.
24. Ibid., 119.
How to Meditate Like Mary Magdalene
25. Taussig, A New, New Testament, xiii.
26. Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, 14.
27. Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, 60.
28. Ibid., 71.
29. Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, 38.
Mary Magdalene Was Not a Prostitute
30. Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, Preface.
31. Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, xiv.
32. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, 152
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 144.
35. Ibid.
36. Leloup, The Gospel of Philip.
A Religion Every Body Belongs To
37. Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, 65.
Why I Am Proud to Be Part Impala
38. Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1997), 20.
A Ship Without Sails
39. I met with all these people in a dream; they were standing in a semicircle in front of me. Their faces were the most endearing faces I had ever seen. No, it’s more as if these were the faces of the people I’ve always loved. Or always sensed with me. Somehow within me, or within my heart. I felt this ache to see them standing there with me, before me. I felt home. They were a motley crew, a circuslike bunch of beloved friends. There was a tall, lanky man; his eyes were so kind and quiet, I started crying. There was a slight, sinewy woman standing beside him with the most eloquent hands. There was a childhood friend I only half-remembered; her name was Mo. And there was an imaginary friend who I had completely forgotten. His skin was red. I scanned their faces in the semicircle again and again. I wanted to keep the imprint of what it felt like to have them with me again; or to remember they’d never left. Then I told each one of them. Because I had realized that this was why they were here. I told each one that I had been assaulted as a little girl. And it hurt, physically, to tell them. To say it out loud. But it also got easier. It got lighter. And then I understood what was happening. They were carrying it with me. Because, I understood then, that this is what love does. Love takes for us what we can’t carry alone.
Mary Magdalene Revealed Page 22